Amr Mohsen – A story so bizarre…

I thought it may be worth while reminding those who did not witness this tale the first time around or who had forgotten just how crazy our industry can be.

While I am not one to sensationalize events in our industry, one subject has come up twice in the past month and so I thought it may be worth a post to remind those who did not witness it first time around or who had forgotten just how crazy our industry can be.

This story is true and I think I have all my facts straight, but please correct me if I am mistaken in any of it, or I have missed out part of the tale. I have left out many details just so that it does not become too long.

It all started back in the late 90’s when Mentor and Quickturn were locked in battle over emulation patents. I am not going to comment on the merits of the case as I was quite heavily tangled up in it myself. Mentor licensed a patent held by Aptix (for those who love the technical details, it was patent no. 5,544,069). The patent was filed in 1989 and granted in 1996 and claims “field programmable” circuit boards that permit computer programmers to reconfigure the electronic components of an integrated circuit. Mentor paid $1.8M for the rights to that patent.

Dr. Amr Mohsen was the Aptix CEO and the sole inventor of their technology. When the patent was asserted against Quickturn he submitted some pages of his log book to validate when he first invented the claim of the patent. However, Quickturn, now part of Cadence noticed some differences between those pages and what had been used to defend the patent originally with the PTO. It appears as if the log book pages had been tampered with. Another unknown and earlier notebook also magically appeared.

In 1998 the court ordered he turn over the originals of the notebooks for forensic analysis. Up until that time Mohsen had claimed that they were locked up in a safe at his house. Then one day he left them in his car, which was broken into and they were stolen. The courts found this suspicious. He provided further evidence of his date of invention in the form of a day planner. Forensics showed that the ink used for some of the entries had not been produced until 1994 and thus they too were fraudulent.

As if by magic, the notebooks were returned by an unknown benevolent person, who just happened to know the correct address to send them. The court decided that the earlier notebook was a complete fabrication and none of it contained valid entries. On the stand Mohsen pleaded the fifth amendment and at this point the court concluded that the patent was invalid and unenforceable.

To cut a long story short, it was later determined by a higher ranking court that the patent was valid, even without any of the fraudulent changes in the log books, although because of the bad faith in the way they were handled, the judge ruled that the case was unenforceable and awarded damages to Quickturn.

Mohsen was charged with conspiracy, perjury, and obstruction of justice. Right before his trail was about to start, Mohsen was arrested while in possession of a passport and $20,000 in cash – which was in violation of his bail agreement. He had been overheard by the FBI making flight arrangements to the Cayman Islands. This added a further case on contempt on his shoulders. He was incarcerated, but this did not stop his chain of misconduct. While in jail, he conspired with another inmate to intimidate witnesses in his trial. That inmate turned on Mohsen, negotiated a decrease in his sentence and became an FBI informant. His requests for intimidation continued, including setting fire to a witness’s car. Finally he tried to get the Judge in the case murdered – although he was later found not guilty of this.

On March 2006, Mohsen was found guilty of 17 charges including conspiracy, mail fraud, perjury, obstruction of justice, contempt, attempted intimidation of witnesses, and solicitation of the arson of a witness’s car. He was sentenced for 17 years and to be followed by 5 years of supervised release.

Aptix finished up filing for bankruptcy and the assets were eventually obtained by Mentor. Mohsen also filed for bankruptcy and was represented by an appointed public defender. He later found enough money to mount an appeal, but this gave him no relief and all convictions were upheld. This is a tale of a brilliant man who was one of the founders of Actel, the founder of Aptix, and who will now spend most of the rest of his life in jail because he didn’t trust that he had been the first to invent something and then let it continue to escalate because he couldn’t stand the shame.

Please remember this tale the next time you are tempted to cover your tracks. You may just be digging yourself deeper.

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If the new patent law renders notebook writings void, then Quickturn is the aggressor in the first place as it infringed on an intact patent.
Why then Amr Mohsen is still in Jail??.
Is it because he founded the best FPGA for military applications ??
It is a clear set-up case. True, Mohsen did fall in the trap. But he was in the defense position. Those who set it all up for "unclean" political/military purposes are the true criminals no matter what the "American justice" rules.

This is a very sad case, but as presented, paints a picture far more extreme than just bad judgement or stepping over a line. I'd like to know if this path was in him long before he took it, or did he take a dramatic turn in morality and ethics to go there. I wonder the same things of the likes of the Enron and Worldcom folks. Did they start out willing to rob grandmothers of their savings, or did they drift there little by little over the years.?

If there is one thing that is true in US history, it is that the coverup is always worse than the crime. I was deeply saddened to hear about Amr when the case first broke. As an undergrad at Caltech in 1978, he lectured to us on circuit and memory design once a week in the VLSI design course. The next year I worked with him as the teaching assistant for the course. I learned a tremendous amount from him. He was always a pleasant, engaging, funny person, always willing to help. The person described in this article and emelde's comment is a different person. Sad, very sad.

I was hired by Amr Mohsen as a consultant at Aptix in the 90s, an in-house gig for most of a year to solve problems for him, problems he was doing his best to convince his Board were being caused by staff. I attended his first meeting with Quickturn.
Although I knew Amr socially before working with him, I didn't know him professionally before he hired me. At the time, I'd been immersed in Silicon Valley start-up work for 15 years and thought I'd seen it all.
Amr was, by far, the most ego maniacal, tyrannical, malevolently manipulative CEO I witnessed. He habitually lied and misled his staff and Board about critical issues. Because I was close to two Board members, I warned them something disastrous would happen, eventually, because Amr was so psychologically warped. It was the only time I've made a prediction of this nature.
I'm no longer in The Valley. Friends, who knew graphic details of my adventures with Amr, called me the day the first story of his misdeeds broke in the local press. I KNEW it would get worse. This is a man who spent his life getting by with incorrigible behavior that should have been stopped.
When the primary VC funder of Actel forced Amr out of that company due to his destructive behavior, rather than learning from mistakes he grew bitter and more determined that he could do what he wanted, when he wanted, the way he wanted. He clearly felt entitled, in bizarre ways. And his Svengali methods of controlling his highly competent Board were beyond comprehension.
I've noticed, during all of this, no one else who knows the truth (and there are many people who do) has dared to reveal it publicly. I must presume that is because some still fear his wrath, while those who mentored and supported him in the face of gross misconduct must be embarrassed that they really didn't "get it".
There was no entrapment except the traps in Amr Mohsen's mind, which led him to believe he could deceive and they would follow. That worked until it didn’t.

The author states events but forget the most important fact which led to these events. This is exactly how the judicial system worked in case of Amr Mohsen which led to his indictment. Amr Mohsen might of made a mistake, but it is of most important to understand why the mistakes were made and was Amr Mohsen framed to make these mistakes. As a society, we are trained to judge the outcomes without digging into the facts, Mr. Bailey has fell into this trap. An example is like if a person gets on the bus and someone steps on his/her foot "intentionally" so to get you to swear at him/her ..... once the victim swears, it becomes his fault. A beautiful system we have.
The author says,
Dr. Amr Mohsen was the Aptix CEO and the sole inventor of their technology. When the patent was asserted against Quickturn he submitted some pages of his log book to validate when he first invented the claim of the patent. However, Quickturn, now part of Cadence noticed some differences between those pages and what had been used to defend the patent originally with the PTO. It appears as if the log book pages had been tampered with. Another unknown and earlier notebook also magically appeared.
This is the MOST IMPORTANT PART .... why was a patent already issued by the USPO ten years earlier challenged from the first place and why was Mr. Amr Mohsen asked to o bring a log book to validate it. ????????????????????? An obvious question we all have to ask ourselves first to present a fair story to all. Till this question is answered satisfactory, I have no comment to make different than Mr. Mohsen trial was unfair since there is an obvious possibility of a conspiracy between Quickturn and the judge

@BrianBailey: that would be a great service for some of us involved in IP issues & startups and to the rest of the EE Times community as well.
Many chapters of the IEEE in Silicon Valley regularly hold Patent-101's. Having managed IP portfolio in two of my previous jobs, I think 101's are great but engineers still don't get a clear picture of how to translate their technical ideas & concepts into claims. I have interacted with many a patent agent and they seem to rely more on the inventor to guide them. So engineers/inventors need to get good at this and forum like you are considering would be a great portal.
Dr. MP Divakar

Yes - I had to chuckle a little at this, but this should also be a warning to start-up companies - protect before you divulge. as the new editor for EDA DesignLine, I hope to start up a legal corner that will help people navigate the whole area of intellectual property protection.

There are no winners here, it is sad to read what became of Dr. Mohsen.
The recent patent law that was signed by Obama would make the notebook entries irrelevant -first to file wins no matter what!
MP Divakar

The whole case stunk of entrapment, based on what I gathered. In my opinion, this was not a fair trial for Dr. Mohsen. You should google "riordan mohsen appeal" to see how his trial had some major issues.
Specifically it was the allegation of solicitation to murder a judge, which was presented to jurors along with the false evidence charges, that was a serious issue in the case. The jury had to rule on the false evidence charges before they heard the unconvincing solicitation to murder charges.
Mr. Bailey, I take issue with the statement "he tried to get the Judge in the case murdered," though it makes for nice reading and proves the point that the allegation made for an unfair trial. You should have prefixed that with "His jailhouse companion alleged." This jailhouse informant got a ten-year reduction of his sentence for his testimony (not exactly free testimony).